Jay's nervous for this race, maybe a little more anxious than nervous. He knows that he can race it really fast but he hasn't been able to capture it DURING a competition. In a race everything has to go perfect, the pre-race routine, entering the staging area, mounting the blocks, the set, the start, the dive and then the 24-25second of the race itself for you to have that ONE RACE..and that's what he's looking for. He's listed as 3rd fastest in his age group (45-49yr old men) but he knows with THAT race he could be fastest if it all comes together.
They're running behind again and right before Jay goes to go to the staging area he can't find his race goggles and it's throwing him off. They were in his pocket he says but they're not around his seat and they're not in his bag (we tore it apart twice). When we arrived he and Grey were sitting on the floor in the walking aisle (Maria actually took a photo!) and someone asked that they move -
I suggested maybe they fell out there and someone had moved them up onto the next level, which was a little raised, to move them out of the way. They hadn't, but they had moved everything off to the side and out of the way and Jay's goggles were there. That was about 35 mins before his race. Might affect him, or he might have calmed down the moment he found his goggles. He had practice googles and a second pair of practice goggles available if needed but those weren't the ones he wanted.
He and Grey set off, they're about 50 mins behind again - how they can be 50 mins behind schedule at 10am is beyond me but I think that the oldest age groups are taking longer than their 'anticipated' entry times. Grey is in Heat 32, the 3rd fasted Heat for the same Men's age group and pulls out another Personal Best.
Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday that Jay's 50M Breaststroke time was a Canadian Record that he smashed by about a second for the Mens 45-49 Age group! He's already got a couple of Canadian Records, I think in the 50M and maybe 100M Freestyle in short course (25M pools) - this is a long course competition (50M pool).
Jay's race he comes 3rd - he's in the fastest Heat so he's got BRONZE!! He finishes and I'm like - well he got Bronze but he won't be happy with his time of 24.88s he really wanted to be low 24s and his STRETCH goal was 23.95 - he hasn't really analyzed what went 'wrong' or why it didn't all come together other than it didn't.
We have a food tour booked for this afternoon, but now we'll wait for the medal ceremony for Jay to claim his Bronze. Jay originally said that he would do the food tour but then Grey came to watch Jay swim yesterday (even though Grey wasn't swimming so he made the trek over to the event location and stayed and waited) so we agreed that he wanted to be there for Grey's "big race" the 100M Fly in the afternoon. We assume, because of the way they've been running behind on everything that Jay's just going to miss the food tour but if he has the opportunity to meet up with us then he will half way through.
I sent a video of the Ceremony to Jay's Dad, who left early this morning to go and do his presentation in London, UK that he was over here for and to his Mom, who's very proud and stayed up to stream the race. I sent them both a video of the race too - it's all so close I didn't know if he got 2nd or 3rd until it popped up on the screen. And, of course, my family and Steve and Juls got all the updates too.
Maria, Jim and I left for the food tour, we're meeting on The Pearl, where Chrissy lives and doing a walking/driving tour of the 3 different areas (Porto Arabia, Medina Central and the Italian area which I can't remember what it's called). We got there about 20 mins early so we did a walk around in a loop of the area which is supposed to be like Venice with the canal and bridges.
I woke up this morning with a sore throat (I didn't tell Jay because I didn't want him to get in his head that I might be sick and that's why he might be tired) and throughout the day today I've had random bouts of sneezing because my sinuses are irritated. It might just be the change in weather and the flying but I think I might be getting a cold.
We met Basil, the owner of the tour company, he's just graduated University in Mechanical Engineering and has been applying for jobs for the last 6 months. He works in Sales right now selling furniture for a company that builds and furnishes commercial office spaces and does tours on the side.
He's not a good tour guide. We're not sure how this tour got such good reviews, he's very quiet - mosies too slow and doesn't give us any local information while we're walking around really. He can't answer a lot of questions, which I would assume are questions most tourists would ask. But, we get to the first place and we have Masala Dosa which is DELICIOUS and I think maybe I've judged too harshly and it will all be ok. No, that was the best part of the tour, by far.
After the Masala Dosa we're waiting in line to get on a little boat, their version of the gondolas through the canals and we ask if it's taking us somewhere (like a water taxi) or if it's just a loop. It's just a loop and the canal has at least a 10 ft concrete foundation raised from the water, and we already did a walk around the loop, so after waiting 10-15 mins and not making it very far in the line I text Maria when I see her pull her phone out and say "We could just skip the boat?" She quickly replies "Yup" and so we tell Basil we'll just move on, we don't need to get on the boat to do the loop. He's apologetic and says this is the busy time and when it's not as busy the driver would drive us right over to Porto Arabia but that port is actually closed right now and the drivers are too busy to 'taxi' you they're only doing the tour loop.
Next we drive over in his car to Porto Arabia and sit down on a nice, open patio for some Karak tea. I had this tea with Chrissy in the souq and, because Maria had already warned me it was sweet, it was good. I don't like sweet drinks really, but because I knew to expect it it was nice. This Karak tea was much nicer than the one I had at the souq, it was more flavourful and a little less sweet. It has cardamom in it and other spices. Jim and Maria both had red tea with mint instead because they both find the Karak too sweet. Basil told us that this chain used to only have one cafeteria style branch far north in Qatar but one of the Royal brothers went to it and posted about the tea on his social media and within a few years there are now 70 branches throughout Doha and now they're restaurants as well. Where it was located far north was where people would go to do Falcon challenges - 5-6 friends would drive up to the dessert in their special vehicles meant to drive their falcons and stop, they would release 1 prey bird and all release their falcons and whoevers falcon caught the bird would be the winner.
After the tea we walked over to get lamb and chicken kabobs, they were really good too. Too bad Basil was such a dud. He did open up more but usually the tour guides are pretty dynamic and really engage in teaching you - I guess there isn't that much history in The Pearl though either because I asked him when it was all built and he said "I think 2014".
After the kabobs we walked over to Medina Central, the Spanish inspired area. I asked if there was any reason why the 3 areas were Italian, Spanish and Saudi Arabian inspired and he said no, he didn't think so, just to attract tourists with a theme. At this point Jay had texted me, I didn't see it right away so it was about 20 minutes later, I told him not to worry about joining us because it wasn't worth it. It's too bad that we had paid for Jay but then we figured we wouldn't leave Basil an extra tip because a) he got the money for Jay's tour which was $150Cad and b) he's not a great tour guide.
This is, in my opinion, the nicest of the 3 areas, the streets are lined with mature trees and lots of restaurants with patios out front. This is the area that I would stay in if we ever came back to Doha, which is unlikely. Here we had the fried cheese again that Chrissy had us sample at the souq. We told him before we got there that we would just get 1 to share because we all just wanted a taste of it, but he still bought 4 so 3 of them sat pretty much untouched.
Our final stop was for Arabic Coffee which he explained how that works and the traditions it entails. Each home has a 'guest house' essentially where there is always coffee available and the gate is always unlocked. Anyone can come and go as they please and you can't ask them to leave.
We grabbed an Uber after saying a quick goodbye to Basil and back to the hotel.
I'm definitely getting sick. I send a message to Maria, because I know she brought a small pharmacy, asking if she could leave some of her cold medication accessible for when we meet at the airport for our flight tonight. She texts a little while later and says she and Jim are going to go for a walk and they could walk over to our hotel if I wanted some now. So they walk through the mall from their hotel to our hotel and I meet them on the 2nd floor in a loungy area and chat for a few mins before heading back to finish packing up and getting ready.
On their way back to their hotel they went to the Pharmacy for me and got more cold medication and vitamin C tablets. I really do have the best friends!
We have a 1am flight to Male so we kept our hotel for the night even though we have to check out at 10pm because I didn't want to have to check out at 11am this morning and figure out what to do with our bags, etc and have no place to relax for the afternoon and evening.
Tomorrow will be a long day - we have a 4 hour flight to Male and then a couple hours before an island hopper on a sea plane to our resort which is a 55 min flight. It's a 2 hr time difference to Male so now we'll be 10 hours behind home time. But also we land at 5:45am Doha time but it's 7:45am Male time so we have to adjust to less sleep again.
Here goes!
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